Zimbabwe going down the drain... again?

There are some of us who have entered 2012 with a sense of trepidation. They believe this is the year when a decadent earth will collapse into itself. I predicted the same for Zanu PF, but Mother Earth? The bible says no one knows the day or the hour when the Son of Man will come.

For the time being one should live each moment to the full and do good for fellow mankind. Don't listen to those who are creating a multi-billion dollar industry out of scaring people. There even is a movie entitled "2012" that graphically portrays the destruction of the world as we know it. It relives mankind's worst fears…earthquakes, floods, fires, the works. But then I ask, what's new? We already have a fair share of death and destruction… most of it man-made. Haven't we seen it all.

Mankind has become suicidal. We seem to have adopted the motto 'Live today as if there is no tomorrow.' To borrow Zimbabwe Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono's favourite cliché: Guess what; there is a tomorrow that not only we can look forward to, but have a duty to protect for future generations to come.

There are a lot of things that we will never understand. If we knew all life's secrets, we would hasten the end of the world egoistic as we are. We are so destructively selfish that we do not care as to what our actions would lead to as long as we believe we are not on the receiving end. Take the fact that God endowed Zimbabwe with unfathomable mineral riches. Minerals that would easily take the country out of the rut it is in if the revenue were properly channelled to the government. We are assuming here that it would be secure there than in someone else's pocket.

Yet we are robbed blind by a few self-centred individuals whose preoccupation is to wallow in the belief that we owe them a living. We marvel at their ill-gotten riches that they flaunt while announcing to all and sundry that 'they were not born poor!' There is nothing more traitorous than for such people to personalise state resources while they perpetuate the crisis in order to cover up for their travesty.

Zimbabwe is in trouble as a country because there are those whose very existence is dependent on the status quo remaining what it is. Where there is chaos they will thrive. There are things happening in this country that defy logic. Air Zimbabwe, a pale shadow of its former self is barely gasping yet a basic knowledge of economics tells us that it should have been sold.

Those who defend its existence claiming that this would be hawking the family jewels have a crooked definition of the world jewel. The national airline, or what is left of it, has gone way below the status of a rural chicken bus.

It remains a mystery why none of their planes has ever dropped out of the sky. Is it because of the fact that it takes 120 people to service a single Air Zimbabwe plane? I bet you one of these expert's function is to blow cockroaches out of the aircraft's avionics. Aren't we just embarrassed that the South African Taxi Association has managed, or is about to launch an airline of their own?

Our only consolation, perhaps, is that at its worst, the airline came short of allowing passengers to enter the cabin with goats, chickens and bags of grain like used to happen in West Africa is those days of yore. Air Zimbabwe has become a metaphor for failure and like the dodo, a bird that could not fly, it will surely become extinct.

From the mid-eighties Zimbabwe had perfected the knack for creating monstrosities in the name of state enterprise even where they were not needed. Someone thought of another scheme to siphon state funds in the mould of NOCZIM, the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe. Enter the Zimbabwe National Road Agency, ZINARA, which is supposed to construct and maintain the nation's roads, a misnomer by any definition.

What roads? - would be a good question to ask. Anyone who has driven on the roads in Zimbabwe will tell you that they are arguably the worst. In some parts of the country, the roads are simply impassable, in some, they no longer exist. A giraffe is said to have disappeared into one drum-hole. It becomes something of a national crisis if the highways become gullies and are evidently the cause of numerous fatalities. It then begs the question: what the heck is ZINARA doing?

There was a time when the mere existence of a ministry of roads and transport was enough to look after our roads. Now where was the logic of creating a whole new entity whose first act is to acquire a shiny fleet of vehicles for the executives? This is all before we could smell bitumen.

The tolls that are levied on the highways by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, ZIMRA, are supposed be going into the coffers of ZINARA to pay for fixing the roads. The only time when the public knew anything about revenue from toll gates was when ZIMRA employees tasked with collecting the toll fees were caught with their hands in the till and had managed to divert more than a million dollars into their pockets. A MILLION DOLLARS! You can feed a whole province with that kind of money.

In the midst of it all ZINARA adds ore to the confusion by declaring that they were blacklisting a number of local authorities for the abuse of the so-called Road Fund. Now where is the accountability or transparency in all this? Why is it that all we hear about does not directly translate into safe and sound roads that we are supposed to be paying for through road levies and toll fees?

One is often reminded of another miscreation, the National Oil Corporation of Zimbabwe, NOCZIM, which despite clear evidence that we have not yet struck oil, was shoved down our throats. NOCZIM had the dubious distinction of creating one of the most devastating fuel shortages this country has ever experienced before it was embarrassingly terminated. The parastatal proved to be the most blatant siphoning of state resources into the pockets of a few.

At the height of the shortages, panic turned into desperation as very prominent politicians were dispatched to the mountains to seek divine intervention of a traditional kind. If the images of shoeless leaders witnessing pure diesel gushing from a rock that are awash in the blogosphere are any accurate, then it explains why Zimbabwe is in the mess it is in.

And to add to the diversion, has the role of Zimbabwe Republic Police, ZRP's traffic cops been amended to include the mandatory collection of spot fines on the roads? Is it true that traffic police have each been given a daily target to collect from errant motorists? If it is then one can see why Zimbabwe has the highest number of road blocks per kilometre on the planet. Did I mention that they were also corrupt?

Just come to think of it, all these entities with wierd acronyms - ZINARA, ZRP,ZIMRA, NOCZIM,ZANU-PF, AIR-ZIM - are giving us nothing but nasty indigestion.Was just saying.

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Lenox Mhlanga

An outgoing person who is into communications of all kinds. I am a consultant and motivational speaker and I write a column on a  web based newspaper and my own blog. I have worked for organisations ranging from a tyre company to a television station.  I has also lecture in public relations and broadcast journalism at a university. My mission is to make a positive impact in people's lives.

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